Archive

Quotes

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787